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Careers Are a Thing of the Past

I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t believe in careers anymore. I’m beginning to think that having a career is a holdover of a generation that seems to end with mine. Our workforce has become a series of jobs—short-term things we do to earn money versus the pursuit of a career which is basically a longer-term role of employment. A job is not a career. Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines a career as “a profession followed as a permanent occupation”. It doesn’t take much to notice that there aren’t many permanent or long-term positions anymore. I’ve seen too many people lose their jobs due to corporate restructuring and the reduction of staffs based on economically-driven decisions. I’m not blaming the businesses for this turn. As a matter of fact, looking at these workforce changes from a business perspective, it makes dollar sense.

The people I know who still hold a career is really a career in name only. Careers these days have been watered down, twisted, and shaped into something completely foreign to what people had originally intended to work at when they first entered the workforce. I find this sad.

Today’s college graduates are filling out applications for jobs that having nothing in common with the degree framed on their wall. There are many paths one can take to be employed, but the hiring and the duration of the job seems to be at the whim of whatever the economy dictates can be most beneficial to the advancement of the stakeholder’s pocket. Economics 101? Of course.

For those who do end up on a payroll, they are given responsibilities, which they have not been trained for, or are trained poorly, and are showing up each day on jobs because of the need for health insurance and rent and food money. In the meantime, being soul crushing in all other aspects of their personality.

I’ve even found myself in a work environment that turned out to be completely different from what I had started in. I’ve been working within the same industry for over 25 years but my roles have changed dramatically as prescribed by the changing focus of the companies within my industry. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have set myself up in education and training to be in a role that has pigeon-holed me and made me all but obsolete. I’ve come to fully accept that I no longer have a career, but rather it’s just a job. One that pays the bills.

People tell me that I should be happy with that. “At least you have a job.” Yes, of course, I am grateful to be employed. But it’s not the same terms of employment that I grew up thinking they would be.

Careers used to be something you aspired to. You went to school to train for it. You interned at a company to get a deeper level of hands-on experience. These things have all gone the way of Mad Men, and in its stead, there are generations of people who have had to turn in their careers for whatever jobs were available, making the best of a situation nobody prepared us for and different from what our parents told us our future would be. Whether we want to or not, current economic climate has made each one of us stand on the cusp of a new way on how to make life better for ourselves.

Our self-worth and identity are very much wrapped into our employment roles as functioning adults in society, contributing our part of paving the American Way. We will always need food and shelter and to provide for ourselves and our families and losing the idea of having a career can be a big adjustment not just for our lifestyle but how we see ourselves.

All that you knew and worked for are no longer available. The rules have changed and are as fluid as they need to be to keep the corporate shareholders afloat. In a way, this can be a blessing in disguise. It’s human nature to seek ways to pursue our happiness and maybe, as our workforce culture has changed with intensified job responsibilities and increased pressure, it is forcing each one of us to reevaluate what our goals are and what we really want our personal energies to feed.

In our discomfort of the modern-day 9-5 we are recreating a culture that though we may no longer have the careers we were promised in our youth, the jobs we hold can continue to take up a corner of our existence but also allow us a way to start thinking out of the box and find talents and desires within ourselves that either weren’t available before or we were never in a position to have to think along that path.

In Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”, he talks about finding two roads in the woods and trying to decide which road to take. Suspecting he will only have one chance at making the choice, he understands that things have a way of leading to other things and he may not find his way back, he chose the road less traveled, which had made all the difference.

How many of us have traveled the road of anticipated careers and our education? We were so sure we could always come back to walk the other road, but somehow never did because we got caught up in our career. For many of us, we may find ourselves back to that fork in the road, whether from our own hand or that of our employer’s. It can be an opportunity, a second chance to take that road less traveled, and see where it leads.

I don’t think my grandson will ever know the same definition of “career” that I knew growing up and who knows what the workforce will even look like when he’s ready? His will be a whole new generation and the rules will probably change for him, too. I think that the closing of the doors on careers as we know it is jolting but it doesn’t have to be immobilizing. Maybe the window that it opens is one that is more important—having a job but also being able to pursue a more rewarding and richer path and one that we can walk this time with a poet beside us.

4 thoughts on “Careers Are a Thing of the Past”

What a great post! I bet so many people of my generation feel the same way. I agree that careers are really not careers anymore. And jobs serve whatever is needed at the time (job titles often don’t reflect what people really do). If we hold onto what we have known, this will seem sad. But I’ve come around to seeing it as opportunity found, as you say, outside the box. It’s not easy. But neither is the path less travelled. 🙂

Thank you so much Serena! I love and appreciate your comment. Without a doubt it can be sad as is anything that changes and we hold on to the past and it can be scary to embrace the unknown but we’re being put there more often so why not look at it as an opportunity found? I think that’s the key 🙂 I’m so happy you stopped by and commented. Thank you again!

Superb post, Renata! Beautifully expressed! It’s indeed scary to be in a position where you’re unable to live with the sense of predictability and security that comes with a full-time job, which translates to a career when done for a long period of time. The opportunity it creates is to go inward, and discover how we can create value as an individual.

In our connected world of today, it is easier than it has ever been (which is not to say that it is easy! :)) to create and disseminate value as a standalone individual. As a society, I think we’re moving to a model which can be called Peer-to-Peer, where individuals will collaborate independently to generate value, and share it freely without immediate material return.

Pursuit of passion, which was in an earlier era a bold decision, will likely become an economic necessity, which I think will ultimately lead to a better world, but of course the transition to it will be hard.

Thank you Sarvesh! I’m so happy to see you here and happier to read your thoughts and comments. I love your view on the Peer-to-Peer model and I believe we are already seeing signs of it in our society. Perhaps this is how societal evolution occurs in that necessity is the mother of invention and so our economic necessities are teasing out of us a new way of evaluating our personal values and abilities, ushering in a new, better world and one that we may not have envisioned so clearly before. Transitions are never easy but what is on the other side of them are gifts and results that are priceless and well worth it. Thank you again for your insightful comments.